Fantastic Foxes!

At the time of writing Leicester City failed to secure the win at Old Trafford necessary to take the Premiership trophy home with them, although the final destination is largely a foregone conclusion.

Leicester have had a great season, defying expectations in a way that provides hope to all ‘small’ teams, breaking the dominance of the ‘big four’.

If Tottenham secure second, which I expect them to, this will be both automatic qualification places for the Champions League tied up by two sides not expected to qualify at all at the start of the campaign.

Even Roald Dahl when writing Fantastic Mr Fox back in 1970 would have struggled to imagine a fairytale as magical as this as the resourceful foxes of the King Power Stadium have, throughout the season, overcome the well-resourced, big team ‘chicken farmers’.

Their 3-1 snatch and grab victory away against Manchester City was a classic example. The Boggis, Bunce and Bean-sides of the Premier League ignored the Foxes until too late – the plans they devised to stop them doomed in failure.

The modern-day footballing equivalent of Dahl’s main original character has done him proud, playing in a style whereby they stealthily snatch goals with lightning raids, disappearing with the loot while resolutely protecting their den.

Leicester has achieved their success this season under the guidance of Claudio Ranieri, the man dubbed ‘Tinkerman’ for his tendency while managing Chelsea to rotate his squad and make unnecessary substitutions.

The most notable of these was a Champions League semi-final against Monaco when, with the tie in the bag, he made changes that ultimately cost the side and the Italian his job. Ironically, one of his decisions was to bring on defender Robert Huth, a man who has been pivotal to Leicester’s success this season.

Whether by luck or design, it is to his credit that he has made the fewest changes of any of the teams in the Premier League this season, making just 27 changes to his starting line-up.

This is the second-fewest in the Premier League era after the Manchester United side of 1992-3.

To emphasise the point, Leicester have seven players that have been on the park for in excess of 2,500 minutes during the league season, while the next nearest has five. Manchester City has none!

Departed Chelsea coach Jose Mourinho was criticised last season for exhausting his champions and yet made 86 changes!

Ranieri has built a side with uncompromising centre-backs combined with pace upfront and the consistency of selection are a reminder of the sides of yesteryear.

The great irony to this is that their achievements are being compared to one of the great sides of the 1970s, neighbouring Nottingham Forest. They are the last side to have achieved promotion to the top tier and then gone on to win the title. The Brian Clough-led side achieved this in 1978.

The counter-argument to this Leicester City side’s title being better than Forest’s, is the Garibaldi Reds went on to win back-to-back European titles. However, with all due respect to Forest fans, this misses the point of it being a single-season.

Furthermore, it is a little more than a season. Leicester finished last year in 14th position, although they secured this thanks to an end-of-season surge of seven wins in nine matches from April onwards that saw them escape bottom place in March.

In isolation this was title-winning form, although few expected that to continue having dispensed with the services of former coach Nigel Pearson and replaced him with Ranieri.

One of the reasons this debate is cropping up is possibly because there have been so few recent winners of the Premier League with the two clubs from Manchester and Chelsea having swapped the titles since 2003-4 when London rivals Arsenal claimed the top rung.

Back in Forest’s heyday the title was being more evenly distributed with only Liverpool securing back-to back titles although they did claim five in eight years.

Some Forest fans are using this to highlight the disparity in ability between the English teams now and in the 1970s. Their argument, as it goes, is that this is a good season for Leicester to win as the sides in England are weak, as evidenced by their collective poor performance in Europe (before the end of a season when Manchester City and Liverpool could claim European titles). Conversely, Forest won their title when English teams, that great Liverpool side (including Dalglish, Souness and Hansen playing under the legendary Bob Paisley), were dominating Europe.

However, this argument is as subjective and emotive as the one that states the league is harder to win now due to the money in the game. This is relative, of course, although does allow for another intriguing comparison.

While Leicester cannot compete financially with the top teams that have been feeding at the top table for years, they are owned by Thai billionaires associated with the King Power Group.

Conversely, Nottingham Forest were getting crowds of less than 8,000 and were remarkably holding cheese and beverage events to raise money from local businesses!

They scraped promotion in third position (before the play-offs were invented), which was the highest position they achieved all season. They won promotion with 52 points from 42 games (two points for a win), the fifth lowest promotion total in history.

Forest were amongst the favourites for relegation and were welcomed in their first match, away at Everton, a side with title aspirations of their own featuring Bob Latchford who went on to be the league’s top scorer, with chants from the home supporters dubbing them ‘lambs to the slaughter’. They went on to win the game and 24 more to claim the title with four matches to spare.

The records of both sides is remarkably similar, both losing just three times. Leicester scored marginally more (on an average basis given the reduced fixture list) while Forest conceded fewer. Forest went unbeaten at home while Leicester have collected 38 points away.

It’s also ironic that Leicester should be achieving success at a time when a new film has been released entitled I Believe in Miracles which is specifically about the Forest golden years.

What sets the Forest season apart is that the second half of the season contributed 26 matches towards a total of 42 games unbeaten, a record that they held until Arsenal beat Blackburn 3-0 in August 2004, while they also lifted the League Cup in an era when it meant something. The late Clough became only the second manager to win the top division title with two different clubs, the other being with East Midlands neighbours Derby County.

Yet, while Leicester’s undoubted accomplishment does not match that of Forest, to have come so far in such a short period of time further enlivens an already exciting league.

Congratulations Leicester City.